Italy government to push for young to have more sex in bizarre anti-immigrant strategy

The bizarre claim came as Mr Salvini, who heads the League party, said the resulting population boom would reduce the nation’s need to import African migrants into the labour force – a situation he likened to slavery.

I'm paid by citizens to help our young people start having children again the way they did a few years ago, and not to uproot the best of the African youth to replace Europeans who are not having children anymore

Matteo Salvini

"I'm paid by citizens to help our young people start having children again the way they did a few years ago, and not to uproot the best of the African youth to replace Europeans who are not having children anymore... Maybe in Luxembourg there's this need, in Italy there's the need to help our kids have kids, not to have new slaves to replace the children we're not having."

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign and immigration minister, was sitting a few places down from Salvini and grew visibly angry as Salvini spoke, finally interrupting the Italian in French with "Allez, allez, allez", suggesting he had gone too far.

"In Luxembourg we had tens of Italian immigrants. They came as migrants, who worked in Luxembourg so that you could in Italy had money to pay for your children," he said in French, concluding with the exclamation "Merde alors!".

Asselborn was apparently referring to the decades following World War Two, when several European countries took in migrant workers to meet the demand for labour during a prolonged economic boom.

The conference, which includes some European and African interior ministers as well as EU officials, was due to wind up on Friday afternoon.